Marine le pen

Yassine was one of the most popular teaching assistants at his primary school in Strasbourg. What is known in the French school system as an ‘animateur’, Yassine supervised the kids during their lunchbreak and in after-school activities. ‘Nice,’ ‘sociable’ and ‘attentive’ have been some of the words used by parents this week to describe the 37-year-old. Yassine had worked part-time at the school for a decade before he was taken on permanently in 2014 because of his popularity with the kids. Last weekend Yassine B [his surname hasn’t been disclosed] was arrested by the French security services after an eight-month surveillance operation. When police raided his flat they allegedly discovered

The result in France in the first round of the Les Républicains party’s primary elections marks the political death of one of the big beasts of French politics. Nicolas Sarkozy, widely known as ‘Sarko’, has been a volcanic presence on the public stage since he became Jacques Chirac’s minister of the interior in May 2002. Within two years he had become president of the right-wing UMP (forerunner of Les Républicains), defeating the favoured candidate of President Chirac, and from there it was but a short step to winning the presidency of France itself. He was defeated by François Hollande in 2012 after a five-year term during which he signally failed

It’s Remembrance Sunday and Marine Le Pen has just appeared on the Andrew Marr show to hail a new world order. The timing of the interview has opened the BBC to some criticism, with the National Front leader attacking NATO, discussing her father’s Holocaust comments, and waxing lyrical about Putin on a day the nation remember those who sacrificed themselves to secure our freedom. In the interview, Le Pen said that Donald Trump’s win ought to be seen as ‘an additional stone in the building of a new world destined to replace the old one’. She drew parallels with the Brexit result and said if there were more referendums across Europe tomorrow, she was ‘absolutely convinced the

In September, Marine Le Pen travelled to Brachay, a microscopic right-wing commune in northeastern France. Despite its diminutive size, this French locality has the greatest percentage of Front National voters – 72 per cent – so its politicians consider it emblematic. With her raucous gusto, produced thanks to decades of smoking, Le Pen regaled the local, mainly middle-aged assembly with a Trump-like speech, claiming she was there to listen to ‘les oubliés de la France’, the forgotten voices of this country, all 59 of them. There she was, in an outfit the French media appropriately described as ‘Madame Tout Le Monde’. In other words, Madame Everybody (if not quite Anybody) — a

His comeback is being called ‘Sarko 2’. Now, four years after the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy lost out to Francois Hollande, Sarkozy has announced he will be running again in the country’s 2017 Presidential election. The announcement was not much of a surprise: Sarkozy has made no secret of his political intentions and has done much to try and generate publicity for himself (not least in being frequently spotted on the arm of his pop star wife). But Sarkozy is more than just a self-publicist and is proving himself shrewd in clawing back French public support. His key strategy is presenting himself as the safe pair of hands in a

Last Friday I noted that you don’t have to go back many months to get the latest mass-casualty terrorist atrocity in Europe these days.  But even while people were still trying to find ways to portray the Nice truck driver as a victim of urban-planning laws we had the next attack. Yesterday it was an ‘Afghan asylum seeker’ who went around a train in Germany with an axe shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’.  That’s the same ‘Allahu Akbar’ (or ‘Allah is greatest’) that the man who drove the truck into the crowds in Nice was shouting as he ploughed through the crowded streets.  Like last week’s Nice attacker, yesterday’s attacker in Germany also

The second round of the French regional election was surprising in many ways. Surprising, because the strategy of the ‘Front Républicain’ worked well against the Front National. But Socialists are now in the awkward position of having zero seats in two important regions that until recently they governed. Even if the Socialists were able to save face by winning a few regions, their defeat was a big one, because in the last regional election five years ago, they won every region in mainland France (except for the Alsace). For the left to lose in Île-de-France, the region where Paris is located, is indeed quite a dramatic blow for them. Another interesting

A bad night for Marine Le Pen, then, in France’s regional elections. Having been ahead in six regions in the first round last Sunday, her Front National appears now to have failed to win one. Cue lots of somewhat contrived jubilation from every right-thinking human on social media. Tonight does indeed represent a significant blow to Marine Le Pen’s presidential aspirations. Winning control of a region or two would have given FN the legitimacy it craves. The huge boost in voter turn out for the second round shows that, when push comes to shove, the French remain far more likely to come out and oppose her party than support it.